Meeting Abstract
Little is known about how birds utilize tail morphing while maintaining yaw stability in gliding, maneuvering flight. To address this gap in our understanding of avian flight, we developed a flying bio-hybrid morphing tail robot that utilizes 12 tail feathers from pigeons (Columba livia). The articulated tail mechanism is capable of four degrees of freedom inspired from avian tail motion during flight: spread/furl, elevation/depression, twist, and yaw. The feather motion needed for spreading and furling is accomplished with underactuation, a concept that has been shown to successfully enable feather motion in morphing bird wings. The distal tail feathers are actively actuated and elastic bands that link each feather underactuate the remaining feathers. We tested the tail mechanism on a fixed-wing robot that logs position and orientation data of the body and tail during untethered flight. This work allows us to test theories on bird flight control strategies which will provide inspiration for future supermaneuverable flying robots.
